Keep Your Shoe Closet Neat & Tidy With This Dollar Tree Must-Have

Have you ever reached for a mug in your kitchen and thought, "My shoes would look great on this shelf?" You might have just snorted coffee out your nose laughing at that line, but every now and then, the most unlikely household item can be repurposed in a way – or in a room – you never imagined, and it works great, possibly even better than its original purpose. So it is with the wire shelf risers from Dollar Tree. The simple white wire shelves are normally sized to fit into a kitchen cabinet where you can stack your "Caffeine Queen" mug on a shelf atop the rarely used "Virginia is for Lovers" mug inherited from your aunt. With a little ingenuity, those ordinary shelf risers can become an ideal way to organize a shoe closet into a much neater and tidier space.

Chances are you don't need 20 different ideas to organize your shoe closet (though it might give you the inspiration to clean and organize every cubby in your home), you just need one rather genius idea, like using wire cabinet shelves in place of more expensive shoe racks. They aren't quite as sturdy or as large as typical shoe racks, but that doesn't prevent them from being useful additions to your shoe closets. They can even be pretty, cheerful, or matchy-matchy to your décor by weaving some ribbon or fabric through the wires, an idea we discovered on Our Fifth House, but wish we'd thought of ourselves.

The beauty of using wire shelf risers is that they allow you to put lower-profile shoes (flip-flops, sandals, slippers) under the risers and taller shoes (boots) or clunkier shoes (sneakers) on top. Just remember that risers from a dollar store aren't as sturdy as store-bought shoe racks that will help you organize a closet or mudroom.

Shelf risers are less helpful if you have spiky-heeled footwear; those sexy stilettos may need to rest on something solid so they don't slip between the slats of the rack. An inexpensive and easy fix is to top the risers with a sturdy (not paper) shelf liner, like Duck EasyLiners.

Even if you aren't putting 4-inch Barbie©-style high heels on it, the slat design is handy in other ways. The open design allows you to use zip ties to connect more than one riser until you get to the length you need. Connect, zip, then snip off the excess zip tie with a pair of sturdy scissors. You can even create shapes, depending on the configuration of your closet, or go deeper by adding a double row. If you're feeling especially creative, you might try a U-shape to go along the sides and back of a closet. When it comes to keeping your shoe closet neat and tidy, you are limited only by your imagination, the number of shoes you have, and how many wire shelf risers you can find at your local Dollar Tree.